Help defeat Digital Restrictions Management!

Defective by Design is a campaign of the Free Software Foundation. Will you
help us end DRM? 80% of our funding comes from individuals like you. That
allows us to be independent, serving computer users around the world, rather
than corporations and governments. Join us in continuing to battle against
Digital Restrictions Management across the web. Become an FSF Associate Member
for just $10/month, or make a donation in any amount. Thank you.

With the holidays, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday on the horizon,
we know that a lot of you are on the lookout for cool tech gifts to
thrill your loved ones. However, we also know that you don't want
to trap them with proprietary software and insidious technologies
like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).

During this year's International Day Against DRM we asked people who want to put an end to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to take action with us, and so many of you did.

In addition to the other activities of the day, we penned a letter to Netflix, asking them to remove DRM from their original productions. Since then, we've emailed the letter to the Netflix board, and sent a copy of the letter to their offices.

The U.S. Copyright Office finally published its study on the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and is launching into the next round of the exemptions process. ** We need your help by July 30th to support our comment to the Copyright Office calling for renewal of all previously granted exemptions.**

UPDATE: The petition has been sent to Netflix. Thank you so much to everyone who participated in this action against DRM!

Through the creation of original work, Netflix can no longer hide behind the excuse that they only use DRM due to requirements from the film and television industries. Netflix needs to work for their subscribers, and their subscribers are mistreated by DRM. Please sign the petition below, insisting that Netflix respect the rights of its subscribers!

Digital Restrictions Management. DRM. the software that comes
bolted to your digital media and computerized devices and tries to
police your behavior. The major media companies are its masters, and
they justify it as a necessary evil to prevent filesharing, calling it
Digital Rights Management. But it does more than that, and worse than
that. Giving its owners power over our cars, medical devices, phones,
computers, and more, it opens a deep crack in our digital rights and

While Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) isn't a thing to celebrate, the work people are doing against it is. This is part of why we organize International Day Against DRM (IDAD), a day to raise awareness about DRM, take community action, and celebrate what is being done by activists, artists, booksellers, farmers, filmmakers, musicians, and publishers.

The inventor of the Web is considering allowing corporate interests to change its underlying technology, extending their ability to control users' computers with DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), undermining Internet freedom, and exposing people to surveillance and criminal threats online.

As Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee considers this decision, people around the world are placing hundreds of phone calls urging him not to allow the change. Now a small artist-led group called Ethics in Tech is taking it to the next level—this Saturday, they will march to Berners-Lee's office in Cambridge, MA, to demand he heed the call of human rights groups, tens of thousands of Web users, and his fellow Web pioneers: reject DRM in Web standards and stand up for the free, fair Web that everyone except a handful of big companies wants.

When people buy an ebook, do they expect to be able to read it for the rest of their lives? How about the ability to make a backup copy of a movie before their hard drive breaks? For most digital media purchases, these reasonable activities are prevented by DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), but it appears the vast majority of customers don't know it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Boston, Massachusetts, USA—Thursday, April 13th,
2017—Today Defective by Design granted Tim Berners-Lee the first ever
Obedience Award, recognizing his work to help wealthy corporations add
DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) to official Web
standards. Inspired by the MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award, the
Obedience Award highlights activity upholding the status quo despite
an overwhelming ethical case against it. Today is the first
opportunity for the addition of DRM to become final as per the formal
process for setting Web standards.

Since the beginning of the Web—the age of dial-up Internet connections—the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has kept the Web's technical standards tuned in a careful balance that enables innovation while respecting users' rights.

Twenty-five years ago, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Back then timbl -- as he's known online -- declined opportunities to lock down his creation and established himself as an advocate for a freedom-affirming, interoperable, and universally accessible World Wide Web. Now he's considering turning his back on this vision to make Netflix, Google, Apple, and Microsoft happy.

Have you ever purchased a digital product, only to discover that you
couldn't use it as you wish? Maybe you bought your favorite musician's
new album and realized that you couldn't make a copy to share with
your friend, or you downloaded an ebook that you couldn't read on both
your tablet and your desktop computer. Those are both forms of
Digital Restrictions
Management
(DRM) -- technological handcuffs that control how you can use digital
media.

Microsoft made the news last week when it announced that its Edge Web
browser could deliver a better Netflix streaming experience than the
other three most popular browsers. On Windows 10, Edge is the only one
that can play Netflix's video streams — which are encumbered with Digital
Restrictions Management (DRM) — in 1080p high definition. A
PCWorld article confirmed the claim, but no one writing online
has been able to give a clear explanation for the discrepancy.
Following the tone of Microsoft's announcement, most writers seem
content to imply that Edge's "edge" in Netflix playback on Windows
derives from technical superiority, and that intelligent Netflix
users should switch to Edge.

Activists helped the FSF hand-deliver a comment to the
Copyright Office with over twelve-hundred co-signers calling for the
repeal of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA)
anti-circumvention provisions and the triennial exemptions process,
but the Copyright Office refused to accept the comment.

Just a quick reminder that the International Day Against DRM is
coming up this Tuesday, May 3rd. This is the tenth anniversary of the
Day, and we're burning the candle at both ends, winding for up for a
momentous day of action.

In corner offices around the world, those who profit from Digital
Restrictions Management are writing their speeches for this
Tuesday, "World Intellectual Property Day."1 This global
but decidedly not grassroots event is a project of the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Yes, those are the same
wise folks who convinced governments around the world to make it a
crime to circumvent DRM even for legal purposes, undercutting digital
freedom, security research, and access for those with disabilities.

Last week, we asked you to show the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that you wouldn't allow Digital Restrictions Management in the Web's technical standards, and you answered. From around the world, you sent in protest selfies against the proposed restriction standards championed by Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Hollywood. With you at our backs, we're organizing a major demonstration this Sunday, outside the building where the W3C will be meeting to discuss DRM. A parallel demonstration is planned outside the W3C office in Amsterdam. Our activism is working -- the campaign has drawn renewed attention to this once low-profile issue and more people are learning that DRM standards would be a major regression for user freedom on the Web.

Join these activists and take your own photo at a W3C office near you.

For years, Defective by Design and the anti-DRM movement have been fighting Hollywood and proprietary software companies who want to weave Digital Restrictions Management into the HTML standard that undergirds the Web. Winning this is a top priority for us -- the DRM proposal, known as EME (Encrypted Media Extensions), would make it cheaper and more politically acceptable to impose restrictions on Web users, opening the floodgates to a new wave of DRM throughout the Internet. We've been calling this awful possibility the Hollyweb -- a network riddled with restrictions that serves Hollywood, not its users.